This country has never gone > 10 years without a recession. I’m hoping for the cycle to provide more “opportunity” soon. Didn’t create it, but riding it or hoping for a buying opportunity isn’t shameful.

Also, I think some of the innovations coming out of Sillycu*t Valley like self-driving cars will be actively socially and environmentally harmful. So a crisis which delays innovation by a few decades would be useful.

Cheap fossil fuel prices + people incentivized to drive more because commuting from exurban ratholes becomes easy isn’t great. Plus the privacy aspects have not been sorted.

As far as America, I have no particular love for the place as a whole, though I do like certain parts of it.

I love quite a few parts of the US. It’s hard to love all parts of a country almost the size of Europe. My patriotism is local and to individual people. Maybe even global. It’s the middle part, trying to worship something the size of the US that I don’t know all parts of, that I can’t seem to wrap around.

I love the principles it’s claimed to be founded on. Minus crap like the 3/5 rule, etc.

I hate that people twisted those principle to disadvantage certain other people.

I hate that our media seems to be feeding paranoia and war fever worldwide.

The visa question? I think borders should eventually disappear, but it will be a long road. I have no problem with visas and some level of vetting, but the restrictions should be reasonable, not born of knee jerk fear.

Maybe it’s easier to be angry at something you love if it doesn’t meet expectations. If you don’t love it, it’s not as easy to be disappointed.

[quote=spdrun]
Also, I think some of the innovations coming out of Sillycu*t Valley like self-driving cars will be actively socially and environmentally harmful. So a crisis which delays innovation by a few decades would be useful.
[/quote]

Well, arguably self-driving cars will operate in a more fuel efficient manner. The dunce behind the wheel constantly pushing the gas pedal and brakes during bumper-to-bumper traffic really isn’t getting peak efficiency.

From what I’ve heard there’s a real potential to reduce accidents… because self-driving cars drive slower and more carefully than manually driven cars. And that’s exactly why I’m not sure they will catch on. People WANT to drive dangerously, but that’s a huge liability for manufacturers.

Yeah, it would make Robert Moses’s and Frank Lloyd Wrong’s ideas about car based sprawlfests finally viable. What’s the point of dense cities, transit, or even walking when a self-driving sensory-deprivation isolation-box will take you from door to door while you get fatter?

Fossil fuel non-use is best achieved by electric cars (for short distances) and rail for medium distances. A lot easier to power a vehicle over longer distances if you don’t need batteries.

Actually, electric rail + autonomous or semi-autonomous electric cars available for rent ubiquitously would be ideal. But Americans won’t go for it as long as gas prices are cheap. So we’ll end up with self-driving fossil-fool cars burning more energy since people will find it convenient to use them more.

AMERICA! YEAH!

We should be concentrating on hypergrids to move solar energy around the globe (sun always shines somewhere), not on the latest fart app or better ways to burn more fossil fool. But that’s long-range thinking, and there’s no easy money in that.

In a way, it’s a shame that the UN is not more powerful and that we can’t have world government implementing giant projects of that type for the benefit of all humanity.

I think that you’re wrong. Density will become the norm because you no longer have to worry about parking in the city. Call a self-drive car when you need one. Take mass transit for daily commuting.

Don’t we already have that with taxis/Uber/buses/subways? All of these can be improved, but a lot of people don’t want to sit in a seat that’s just been sat in…

[quote=spdrun]

I think that you’re wrong. Density will become the norm because you no longer have to worry about parking in the city. Call a self-drive car when you need one. Take mass transit for daily commuting.

Don’t we already have that with taxis/Uber/buses/subways? All of these can be improved, but a lot of people don’t want to sit in a seat that’s just been sat in…[/quote]

No we don’t. Public transit today is either horribly inconvenient or horribly expensive. In Orange County, a taxi is $2.75 per mile. And Metrolink while ‘affordable’ on a monthly basis for getting to downtown LA, is extremely time constrained.

My car is a capital sink but with regular use, averages less than 50 cents per mile and goes whenever I want.

A self driving taxi fleet has the potential to push the cost per mile with a ‘profit’ for the fleet down.